The current e-commerce is known to be operated in a given sequences and processes enabling a potential e-buyer to search for a supplier through the well known search engines provided by the well known web providers including Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and the less known global and local smaller search engines providers. A potential e-buyer searches for an intended service or merchandize and will select a known or an unknown website on the basis of what appears to be a presentation that corresponds to the intended shopping, be it for services or merchandize.
Once a potential e-buyer finds a link to an e-shop that appears to provide the service or the items he is interested in, he has to go through an elaborated process of finding the items he is looking for. Once the items are found the e-buyer has to go into yet another process for identifying himself, his address and his credit card before he can materialize a purchase.
This process is a frustrating process and as a whole requires repeated attempts to succeed. Despite the time spent to find what one is looking for, most people are hesitant at that point to proceed and disclose their personal details and credit card number, particularly to an unknown website and most people will terminate the session without ordering, even though they may have found what they wanted to buy.
For people needing an immediate deliveries the common process described above does not offer a solution, because for example if one needs in a morning to buy a milk for his breakfast, such process is not adequate as it will take too long for the order to be processed, even if the e-shop is a convenient store located nearby the residence of the e-buyer and does provide for local deliveries.
Such nearby shops that provide e-commerce shopping and deliveries will store details of the potential e-buyers in the neighborhood and the potential e-buyer will introduce the shop's URL icon onto their PC's desk top, or for example, in the Favorite Column of their PC for an immediate recall of the shop's website. In turn the shop will provide the buyer with an access password, identifying the user and his credit card as recorded in the shop server. Such setup makes the ordering process faster and simpler. Similar recording and storing customer's data are offered by large shops, supermarkets, and department stores for improving the process of e-shopping to a repeat e-buyer.
In all the above described e-shopping search processes and setups the e-buyer has to surf the shop website by selecting products or services through a page displayed onto his PC, smart phone or iPad screen, fed from the shop website via the Internet or other IP networks, for selecting his choices through the shop's website server.
Each such shop server has its own architecture, colors, styles, operating systems, programming and processing method that the e-buyers have to learn and follow. Thus even though the e-buyer detailed data is stored in the e-shop server, the proprietary programming and the different shopping processes for each individual e-shop extends the time spent to shop via a given e-shop server.
Further when the whole shopping cannot be supplied by a single shop and must be divided into two or more separate e-shops or e-service providers, such e-shopping calls for a very attentive and time consuming e-shopping process. Thus a combined shopping for groceries, such as extending the milk example given above, to a shopping for milk and cereals that need to be shopped from two separate e-shops is a complex operation. Ordering two items from two different convenient stores in the morning for a breakfast will take a long time to order and too long to deliver, while the e-buyer wants the order to be delivered promptly.
Other methods and apparatuses for e-shopping for services and merchandise in a closed circuit shopping systems similar to the known closed circuits B to B (business to business) or B to C (business to consumer) are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,603,842, 6,940,957, 7,461,012, 8,117,076 and in many corresponding patents issued and pending in other countries. The disclosed closed circuit e-shopping is through a video interphone monitor of a video interphone system and via a shopping terminal of a cable TV system, an antenna TV system, a video interphone system and a dedicated e-shopping terminal.
The basic difference between the two e-commerce methods, i.e., the prevailing e-shopping processes and the processes via the closed circuit shopping system disclosed in the above referenced US patents is the installing of a pre-designed shopping programs by a selected and registered e-shops and loading such programs into the shopping terminals or the video interphone monitors for providing instant shopping displays including programs and displays tailored to the need of and/or the desire of given e-shoppers.
The closed circuit shopping apparatuses refer to video interphone monitors, shopping terminals, TV, cable TV and/or TV and cable TV accessories such as set top box or adaptor box and/or a server that serves the whole building or the whole neighborhood via internal network and/or internal communication lines. The shopping terminal system of the closed circuit shopping provides the hardware and pre-defined programs for enabling a focused programmed select, search and order by the tenants with no time waste and provide for prompt deliveries.
The searches for e-services and e-merchandize are carried through the displays generated by the installed program pages, using the video interphone monitor, the dedicated shopping terminal, the TV or the cable TV displays to process the shopping. The introduction of shopping program transforms the shopping terminals into a self-assembled privately owned e-shopping mall inside each residence, office or business or it can be a private shopping mall of a whole building and/or the whole neighborhood.
The pages of the current prevailing shopping process, the selecting icons, the offered items, their prices, the conditions and any other particulars of the shopping process and conditions, including the availabilities of services or products are commonly designed and programmed by website design professionals, knowledgeable in the structuring of websites. Supermarkets, for example, offering fresh produce, such as green vegetable or dairy products will change daily or weekly their pages to accommodate varying prices and availability because of seasons or transportation problem etc. The change is made to the pages of the shop server or to the group servers used by larger supermarkets or chains of shops.
Such professionally prepared pages do not fit the need to add, amend or replace e-shopping pages of a vast spread shopping terminals in large number of residences or businesses in different locations and places. This is because it will be costly to design specific pages for specific residences or other groups. It will take very long and will be very complex to download the new pages to all the residence's shopping terminals, or download vast programs and pages tailored to the many individual or group preferences.
In practical terms, there will never be enough professionals to program so many different pages daily, or weekly or monthly and the cost will be prohibitive. This mandates the introduction of a method and apparatus for a simple to design, add, amend or replace pages or a portion of page, such as a price of a single product included in a page, or the removal of a product from a page when it is sold out. There is a need to do it all, in an easy to learn, operate and install concept and at a low cost.